No Mother to Guide Her

US: Prion, 2000. Hardcover. Very Good. (No Dustjacket)A clean hardcover, no markings throughout: Elmer Bliss, naive and implacably optimistic champion of the Southern Californian way, uses his newspaper column to defend the movie world's indiscretions from the scandal sheets. As Tinseltown parties end in murder, Elmer innocently runs sunny accounts of the stars' wholesome lives. His crowning moment comes as Miss Viola Lake, Hollywood's favorite clean-cut starlet, is about to be accused of drug abuse and sexual promiscuity during a murder trial that threatens to blow the lid off the film colony. With his good intentions at the ready, Elmer leaps, like a matinee idol, to Viola's protection. With intimate ease, Anita Loos sets up a fondly sardonic and devastatingly funny tour of the glorious artifice and excess that is Hollywood: tasteless fashions, bizarre religious sects, mass murder, sex, divorce, extravagant morals, industry nepotism, and vacuous inhabitants -- fresh from the Midwest -- wandering the boulevards in search of fame and fortune.